The Art Monk Travesty, Day 4

Robbed

A reminder for you Redskins fans, Art Monk was denied for the Hall of Fame for the seventh time. As Peter King reminds us, although Michael Irvin is out of the way for Art, Cris Carter and Tim Brown come up in the next two years, and since the voters have telegraphed that raw stats and not relevance are what matter (Cris Carter: no Super Bowl appearances; Tim Brown: one Super Bowl appearance, a loss in 2003 when he was coming off a 59-catch season where he scored a total of two TDs and his season-long catch was 35 yards), guys that played under tougher rules for receivers will just continue to fall back under increasingly inaccurate historical comparisons. It's a shame.

Skin Patrol at Hogs Haven is owning the Art Monk story. Head over there if you want the rational discourse and a dose of old-fashioned outrage. I'm still having a hard time getting over the fact that Thurman Thomas was elected and Art was not. Although they played head to head three more times, their highest profile matchup is inarguably Super Bowl 26. In that game Art had 7 catches for 113 yards and Thurman had 10 carries for 13 yards, and could not find his helmet on the sidelines for a long period in the first quarter, and if memory serves actually went into the game with someone else's helmet until his could be found.

Coming off that 1991 season, Thurman was the AP NFL MVP, the AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year, the Pro Football Writer's Association NFL MVP and the UPI ACF Player of the Year. I understand one game doth not a career make, but c'mon. The Bills fought back hard after losing a Super Bowl heartbreaker to the Giants the previous year on Scott Norwood's miss, got to the Big Game and...Thurman literally couldn't keep his shit about him. Just didn't show up. No wonder the Bills never won one.

Stats from DatabaseFootball. Hat tip to DjTj at The Art Monk Hall of Fame Campaign blog. Look there for more.



Presumably photoshopped, but you never know with those crafty Aussies. Image from here.